Logitech has recently announced shipping their billionth mouse, just in time to mark forty years since the first mouse was demonstrated in public. Now selling a large range of keyboards, mice, webcams, and numerous other forms of input (and more recently output too), Logitech sells, on average, 7.8 million mice every month, or 376,000 per day, to over 100 countries.

Some readers may remember the times before the mouse, and how the mouse formed the path of both commercial and personal computer use. Many things that are now assumed to be standard are dependent on the invention of the mouse. Operating systems, software, games are all considerably, if not in some cases entirely dependent on the mouse in some form.

Needless to say, the mouse has come a long way since the world's first trackball, with nano-receivers, lasers, and new interfaces (that would have been un-thought-of at the time) being implemented. Yet, despite a plethora of different types and designs of mice, some are certain that the end of the computer mouse is coming soon.

The Nintendo Wii Remote, the Guitar Hero 3 remote guitar and even a 'neural impulse actuator' have shown that for some activities we could find alternatives to the mouse. However, those who are not willing to part with their mice just yet need not worry; nearly all computer users use the mouse as an input, with only a handful of examples showing otherwise.

However, regardless of the speculation and predictions, the mouse seems set to continue to change and evolve as it has done in the past. Logitech's latest milestone shows just how popular one of the computing world's most basic devices has become, and as the amount of computer users increases, so too will the mouse, for a short time, at least.